Traditionally, price quotes for standard goods and services have been given via catalogue, telephone, facsimile and more recently electronically via web pages on global computer networks such as the Internet. Internet service providers are, more and more, connecting users to the Internet at no cost to the users, thereby making the Internet more accessible to a wide range of users. Many of the users connected to the Internet, or having access to other forms of computer networks are choosing to conduct activities relating to commerce over these networks. At the same time, merchants are increasingly developing sites on the World Wide Web (or simply “WWW” or “web”) that customers can access in order to purchase goods and/or services. It is now fairly common for a customer to browse a merchant's catalogue, select a product or service and place an order for the product or service all electronically over the Internet or other computer network.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,115,690, issued on Sep. 5, 2000 to Wong, describes a software system for providing integrated business-to-business Web commerce and business automation. The end-to-end Web business is facilitated by using a computing model based on a single integrated database management system. The software provides a graphical user interface that allows a user to obtain a quote for a product based on a merchant's product list. The quote is assigned a quote number and saved in a database management system, and may be retrieved and viewed at a later date by the customer. Customers and vendors can view payment status, previous quotes and product tracking information. The contents of the above documents are hereby incorporated by reference.
In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,926,817, issued on Jul. 20, 1999 to Christeson et al., describes a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows a user to select optional features relating to a product or service, and then provides the user with immediate feedback in the form of product availability and price quotations. The GUI allows the user to select a product/service, as well as to select and unselect a set of optional features to customize a desired product/service. The system, on the basis of the information provided by the user generates a quote for that product/service and the quote is displayed on the GUI. This system is directed for use by communication service companies for providing dynamic price quoting to their clients when the latter select particular service features. The contents of the above documents are hereby incorporated by reference.
In the above-described documents, the user is provided with predefined goods and services from which the user makes a selection. Such a method generally provides little choice in terms of the definition of the service to be provided and, as such, these systems are generally ill-suited for providing price quotations in the field of transportation services.
In the field of transportation services, systems providing price quotations based on origin, destination and commodity types have also been developed. U.S. Pat. No. 6,061,667, issued on May 9, 2000 to Danford-Klein et al., describes a rating engine for processing rating requests associated with a carrier contract. The system provides a base rating engine for use on a computer that is operable to calculate line rates in response to a rating request by a client application. A rating server application performs the necessary calculations regarding a rating request and returns the results of the request to a client application. The contents of the above documents are hereby incorporated by reference.
A deficiency of the systems of the type described in Danford-Klein et al. is that they provide limited flexibility in the price quotation process for a transportation service. The price quotations are typically generic quotations given to all customers. In order for a customer to obtain a more customized price quotation, the customer must generally contact an account manager in the traditional manner via telephone, mail, e-mail or other means. This type of interaction is costly from both the customer's end and from the transportation service provider's end since valuable resources in terms of man-hours must be dedicated to these telephone, mail, e-mail and other contacts.
Consequently there exists a need in the industry to provide an improved system and method for providing a price quotation for a railway transportation service that alleviates at least in part the deficiencies of prior art systems and methods.